“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity” ― Sun-Tzu, The Art of War   [Editor’s Note: There’s still time to register for the Oct. 5-6 “Ruthless Intent” seminar in Los Angeles ]   Real fights, as we say, are chaos, and in order to “win” you need to manage that chaos, guide the chaos. Own it! The art of Guided Chaos is all about creating or finding opportunity in the chaos. In all that we do this is the goal. Ruthless Intent as I’ve been discussing is all about this and more. Okay, you may want to get…

“Whoever shows up first with the most bullets and is better prepared wins.” –Gen John Kelly, USMC (ret)   [Editor’s Note: The early order discount for the Oct. 5-6 “Ruthless Intent” seminar in Los Angeles ends Sept. 5]   One of the problems of discussing these things is that the more I write about them the more questions I generate. Which is fine by me because I want people to know this stuff. Why wouldn’t I want people that I train to know these things? This is why they train with me. It’s not like I’m taking it with me…

“When I’m moving with someone I get the ‘Shadow Impression’ of their body.” –Grandmaster Perkins to the Senior Master Instructor   [Editor’s Note: The early order discount for the Oct. 5-6 “Ruthless Intent” seminar in Los Angeles ends Sept. 5]   The first time I heard that I was like, “Whaaaaaaat!?!” It kills me because John says this sort of thing all of the time and yet it goes in one ear and out the other for most folks. Their loss. Shame. Anyway… Okay now this is way cool… So, I ask a question of students frequently–it doesn’t matter–I’m just…

“Victory is reserved for those who are willing to pay its price.” –Sun Tzu, The Art of War   [Editor’s Note: The early order discount for the Oct. 5-6 “Ruthless Intent” seminar in Los Angeles ends Sept. 5]   Okay folks, this is what you want to know… This is what I’ve been building up to… I’m apologizing up front for the length of this but I needed to tie some things together in order for them to make sense and I didn’t want to split it up. Anyway… As I’ve asked you in the past in some of my…

“It is spiritless to think that you cannot attain to that which you have seen and heard the masters attain. The masters are men. You are also a man. If you think that you will be inferior in doing something, you will be on that road very soon.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai   Okay I know I sort of hinted at how you go about developing Ruthless Intent, but I realized after discussing this with a few folks, that I needed to elaborate on this a little more from a mindset perspective. I also want…

The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means… ― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings   People are always asking me about this. They want to understand what is it, where it comes from, but most importantly, how to get it. I’m going to cover this from a more mental aspect at first in Part I, and then build on it from there because without getting your mind right you really can’t get there from here. The first time I ever even heard of such a…

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War   Of all the principles in Guided Chaos probably none is more amorphous than the fifth principle of Adaptivity. This principle covers so many aspects of the art and crosses so many boundaries I really don’t know where to begin. What I’m going…

“All I know is I know nothing.” –Socrates   While generally when discussing the principles of Guided Chaos we refer to the over-arching principle or super principle as “Body Unity,” for this installment I’ll refer to it as “Unity” because I’m going to cover a few more things that are not normally discussed. In this installment of my observations on the art of Guided Chaos, I’m going to need for you as I’ve asked in the past to suspend disbelief, not your common sense just disbelief.  I’m going to need for you to put aside whatever it is you think…

Now that I’ve discussed Anticipation and the importance of Timing I’m going to discuss the importance of Looseness–but not from the perspective of re-teaching it, but to discuss some of what I believe are some of the misconceptions about it. This is going to be tough because in my view there are a number of things regarding looseness that seem to contradict each other. I personally don’t believe they are contradictions, rather I believe the confusion lies in a fundamental misunderstanding of how our bodies can carry out multiple movements simultaneously.   On Being Supple   As I’ve written in…

“There is a timing to it…” –Grandmaster John C. Perkins   Piggy-backing off of the last offering where I discussed Anticipation I’m going to jump right into this. When it comes to fighting, in all things there is a timing to it. We see it all of the time in sports but it is just as important when fighting for your life. There should be no ambiguity about this. Now when we are talking about “Timing,” like anticipation what we are really talking about is the concept of “Fighting in the Future.” It is concepts like this that in my…

In this installment of Lessons from My Masters, I’m going to discuss another aspect of the art that I think people misunderstand, and that is the ability to Anticipate. Once again these are just my observations so since you were kind enough to click on the link and read all of the others posts to get to this point I thought I’d share my insights on this because I believe it is also one of the main reasons people get stuck in advancing their ability. But before I get into all of that I need to discuss something related to…

For the final parts of Lessons from My Masters I’m going to explain some things and point out some stuff that are just my observations from nearly 30 years of experience, practice and instructing the art of Guided Chaos. These are my impressions and observations from training hundreds or perhaps over a thousand students at this point, if I include all of the workshops and seminars both formal and informal and people from all walks of life, including people in the military, law enforcement, the medical field and house wives. My observations span a range of skill levels of seasoned martial…

So, in the last installment I spoke about “Fighting in the Future” and how it relates to getting ahead of another person’s movement and is the thing that all martial artists, regardless of system, are doing when faced with an opponent when they get there first. Even if they are not aware of it. So this has been leading up to another concept that people when working with the more advanced practitioners of the art of Guided Chaos experience yet are probably not aware of. I’m reiterating the quote above from the Grandmaster because it really sums up the essence…

There are no small movements with regard to the end result. -Grandmaster John Perkins     Fighting in the future… This is brilliant stuff! Arguably one of the most brilliant concepts Grandmaster Perkins has ever come up with because it, in my mind, is the essence of what happens when you train in the principles of Guided Chaos. Think of this phenomenon as a byproduct of principle development. Like I said this is brilliant stuff and so while the Grandmaster won’t say it, I will! It is concepts like this that in my mind makes Guided Chaos the most well…

“We try to make training that works for reality. Even mimicking real fights does not contain the neurophysiology needed. GC is a development of body and mind particularly aimed toward simultaneous adaptability to chaotic situations. Even the scenario training is nearly worthless without the development of all our major principles…You can’t really shoot, stab, or break people’s bodies in a fake way. After being physically involved in real life and death fights and studying thousands of after action reports of real violent crimes including expertise in blood splatter interpretation on real homicides, I developed Guided Chaos…” —Grandmaster John C Perkins…